Lisa Jackson's roller coaster EPA tenure parsed

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is leaving her post after four years of battling Republicans and industry while also giving the White House some heartburn along the way over her push for new clean air rules.

Jackson has won praise from greens for her tenure, but she also leaves with the Obama administration having yet to aggressively address climate change.

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Jackson addresses resignation rumors at POLITICO event

“I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference,” Jackson said in a statement Thursday.

The agency said she plans to leave after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address early next year. If a nominee to replace her has not been confirmed by then, the White House plans to have Jackson's deputy, Robert Perciasepe, serve as the acting administrator.

Jackson faced tremendous opposition in her four years at the EPA, where she was a lightning rod for attacks from the right for environmental regulations considered tough on industry — particularly coal.

Many on the right dubbed her the administration’s general in the election year “war on coal,” and most recently she faced tough criticism for the revelation of a secondary EPA email account she used under the pseudonym “Richard Windsor.”

Under Jackson, EPA made the critical determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment, paving the way for first-ever rules to deal with global warming, and pushed through stringent new toxic air pollution standards for power plants.

But Jackson ran into opposition from the White House in her push to set new smog standards, nearly quitting over the decision to punt tougher limits until after the election.

"It was an ugly episode as political science trumped real science," said Frank O'Donnell, head of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch.

On Thursday Obama praised Jackson.

"Under her leadership, the EPA has taken sensible and important steps to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, including implementing the first national standard for harmful mercury pollution, taking important action to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act, and playing a key role in establishing historic fuel economy standards that will save the average American family thousands of dollars at the pump, while also slashing carbon pollution," Obama said in a statement.

Jackson’s tenure had plenty of ups and downs as she battled with a White House concerned about the nation's fragile economic recovery and with Republicans eager to exploit any political opening to help keep Obama from winning a second term.

But for greens, she was still a big improvement after eight years fighting the George W. Bush administration.

"Health and environmental advocates will definitely miss her," O'Donnell said. "She has been a real champion for clean air. She is going to be a tough act to follow."

O'Donnell praised Jackson for "some very significant wins during her tenure," including two rounds of tough new fuel economy limits and regulations to clamp down on power plant pollution.

National Wildlife Federation President and CEO Larry Schweiger called Jackson "one of the most effective leaders" in EPA's 42-year history.

“There has been no fiercer champion of our health and our environment than Lisa Jackson, and every American is better off today than when she took office nearly four years ago," added Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Lisa leaves giant shoes to fill. And her successor will inherit an unfinished agenda that begins with the issuance of new health protections against carbon pollution from existing power plants — the largest remaining driver of climate change that needs to be controlled.”

Industry lobbyist Scott Segal said Jackson's role crafting environmental policy in the Obama administration grew over time, "largely due to her excellent communications skills, likable personality and skilled use of political leverage."

Readers' Comments (54)

The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General announced Monday that it is beginning an audit of agency employees' use of private email accounts and "aliases" or false names in conducting official business.

In November, Republican leaders of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee began their own investigation into the alleged use of private emails after the Daily Caller reported that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used alias email accounts, including one under the name of "Richard Windsor." At that time, it requested inspectors general for several federal agencies, including EPA, to conduct their own investigations.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General announced Monday that it is beginning an audit of agency employees' use of private email accounts and "aliases" or false names in conducting official business.

In November, Republican leaders of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee began their own investigation into the alleged use of private emails after the Daily Caller reported that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used alias email accounts, including one under the name of "Richard Windsor." At that time, it requested inspectors general for several federal agencies, including EPA, to conduct their own investigations.

Typical Repub/Tea Party professional hack job on a person that cares about what is in our water and our environment........and on the the next one who stands up and gets in the way of protecting the profits of greedy fuel companies that supports Republican "Party" congress persons.......

You can fool some of the people some of the time...but not all the people all of the time.....

The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General announced Monday that it is beginning an audit of agency employees' use of private email accounts and "aliases" or false names in conducting official business.

Something that was also done by her predecessors. You don't think she needed a second e-mail account for work-related e-mails so they didn't get lost among the thousands of e-mails she receives daily on her official e-mail address from crackpots like Dorfs1 accusing her of wanting to tax breathing?

Lisa Jackson has done a good job during difficult circumstances. I certainly hope her replacement will be even stronger in the enforcement of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. What I don't want to see is some wimp that will bend to the destructive will of industry especially the energy industry.

Lisa Jackson has done a good job during difficult circumstances. I certainly hope her replacement will be even stronger in the enforcement of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. What I don't want to see is some wimp that will bend to the destructive will of industry especially the energy industry.

For the record, IT IS WRONG FOR ANYONE (Dem/GOP/Ind) IN GOVERNMENT TO SIDESTEP THE RULES!!!!!!

So much for the FOURTH ESTATE!

The practice of assigning a secondary email account to the administrator at EPA is not new to this administration. The intent, the agency says, is for the administrator to have a manageable email account in addition to the one that is openly available to the public. Jackson’s alias account is an EPA.gov account, housed on government servers and subject to federal record-keeping and Freedom of Information Act requests, the agency says.

Top officials in Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration used personal email accounts to craft a media strategy for imposing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts — a method of communication that can make it more difficult to track under public records laws despite Jindal's pledge to bring more transparency to state government.

Emails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal that non-state government email addresses were used dozens of times by state officials to communicate last summer about a public relations offensive for making $523 million in health care cuts. Those documents weren't provided to AP in response to a public records request.

GREAT !! Now we can have another Van Jones,John Holdren,Communist fossil fuel hater helping Obama destroy our energy independence at the EPA. Can't wait to see which anti-fracking,anti coal,anti nuke, greenie he picks for this one. I think Cass Sunstein is still available,or maybe Beelzebama is saving him for a Supreme Court pick.

@Grandma - Yep. But hey, they're ok with childhood asthma, emphesema, lung cancer. Odd, isn't it, that the same people who want to do away with any measures to protect our air (and water, and food) also could care less about whether or not people can afford to pay for the medical treatment they'd need when they come down these illnesses.

Funny thing about it,back in the 20', 30's, 40's and 50's ,,when the pollution was so thick you couldn't see the sun,there were MANY fewer cases of emphysema,lung cancer,and other respiratory diseases than today. Think maybe it's because of kids sitting on their fat rear ends indoors playing video games,and adults puffing away on chemical laden,(menthol etc) cigarettes ?? Talk to anybody with lung cancer or pancreatic cancer and chances are they have been a heavy smoker of filtered menthol cigarettes.

Hope she takes the entire agency with her. There are few, if any, agencies of the federal government which are more responsible than the EPA for the sorry state of our economy, especially in manufacturing type jobs. The iron fist of the EPA, and it's onerous job killing regulatory schemes, have done enough damage to last a lifetime. Those of us who live in coal producing states know all to well what the agenda of people like this means for good paying jobs- it means they are sacrificed in the name of the environmental agenda for which these folks have a undying zeal, human cost be damned. She can go to hell for all I care.

The Republicans' repudiation of environmental regulations is not about "jobs." It's about profits for the energy companies, which line their campaign coffers. It's the same refrain when they whine that if people making $1,000,000 or more are asked to pay more in taxes, it will cost the nation "jobs." I'm not real sure that hedge fund managers making a gazillion dollars a year create many jobs. However, politics reigns over what is good for this nation long-term. The Asians think in terms of decades. In our environment, our businessmen and politcians rarely think beyond 3 months.